Film Event Highlights - February 2013

The Cameo in Edinburgh is screening three Hitchcock films this month as part of its Vintage Sundays season. Based on a short story by Daphne Du Maurier, The Birds (3 Feb) tells the tale of a small community trying to survive a vicious avian attack. The excellent Rear Window, starring James Stewart as a housebound photographer convinced his neighbour has murdered his wife, is showing the following week (10 Feb). The season finishes with Psycho (17 Feb), the film that cemented Hitchcock's reputation as a master of suspense.

The DCA in Dundee hosts Cinema Republic each month – a film suggested by the people, for the people. This month the chosen movie is Cinema Paradiso (14 Feb), an Italian comedy drama inspired by the childhood of director/screenwriter Giuseppe Tornatore. The acclaimed film, which won the Best Foreign Language Film award at the 1989 Oscars, is a love story between a boy and the movies – what better way to spend Valentine's Day?

With Tarantino's latest, Django Unchained, nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, it is only fitting that the Belmont in Aberdeen screens some of the acclaimed director's movies this month. Kill Bill: Vol. 2 kicks off the month in a suitably violent fashion (4 Feb), followed by Death Proof, sadly still separated from its Grindhouse companion Planet Terror (11 Feb), and ending with Inglorious Basterds (18 Feb), which saw Christoph Waltz win his first Best Supporting Actor award.

On 6 Feb punk fans should head to the GFT in Glasgow or the Cameo in Edinburgh for a special screening of The Punk Syndrome, a documentary about Finnish punk band Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät, whose members all have learning disabilities but use their music to challenge society's assumptions about disability. Documenting their transition from obscurity to fame, this insightful and entertaining film is followed by a live Q&A session with the band's members at both venues.

Finally, both the Filmhouse in Edinburgh and the DCA are showing several Roman Polanski movies this month. Repulsion, starring Catherine Deneuve as a young girl in London whose mental state rapidly deteriorates due to her isolated lifestyle, is showing at the Filmhouse (1-2 Feb), alongside Dance of the Vampires (1-4 Feb). At the DCA, one of the director's finest films and a hugely influential movie of the 1970s, Chinatown, is showing (3 Feb), as is the Oscar-winning Tess (10 Feb), an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.